The Boston Girl – by Anita Diamant – independent book review – Historical Fiction (United States)

Here’s a book that gets better with every page you turn. Awarded four stars on Goodreads.This book is a first person account, a grandmother narrating her life’s story to her granddaughter. Anita Diamant has created a very believable voice in the character of this grandmother. Although Addie Baum is Jewish, her ethnic voice could just as easily be Italian or Greek.

Addie’s story is typical of her generation, with a twist. She is born to immigrant parents, grows up in a tightly knit ethnic community in Boston, lives through World War I and the flu epidemic, and is constrained by the social expectations of marriage and motherhood (and not much else).

But Addie doesn’t quite fit in. She’s a reader and interested in the wider world. How Addie manages to move beyond the limitations her family tries to impose, and become an office worker, a newspaper writer, and later, a social worker, is a testament to how a determined woman can make things happen.

Throughout the book, there are believable anecdotes that could apply to hundreds of women of Addie’s time. A troubled relationship with a mother who’s impossible to please, a few botched romances, an eventually satisfactory marriage to a good man, and a lifetime of deep bonds with close woman friends. Well worth your time.